THE SINNER'S PALACE
FORSTNER'S fate worked marvels in the outward behaviour of the
Wirtembergers. The strange scene upon the market-place lingered in their
minds, and the actual loss which Forstner sustained in confiscated
properties, monies, and titles, made the sober burghers careful even in
the private expression of their hatred of the Landhofmeisterin. They
still spoke of her as the Landverderberin (Land-despoiler), but they
greeted her with reverential demeanour when she thundered through town or
village in her coach.
Of her witchcraft there was no longer any doubt, in all opinions.
Forstner had suffered from a grievous disease, they had heard, since the
witch-woman had practised her horrid magic upon his effigy. True, Prelate
Osiander had spoken openly of the natural and inevitable effects of such
cruel misfortunes upon a man, already weakly in health, but they argued
that the churchman was obliged to take this view, and his Reverence's
opinions were rejected.
Yet the fierce hatred only smouldered under this calm and respectful
demeanour, and the Landhofmeisterin knew this right well, for his
Highness's Secret Service reported many things. The vigilance was
unceasing; through the whole country the spies wandered, and many were
the fines they levied for careless words which they called treason.
'Treason to whom, great God!' wailed the wretched people. 'Treason to his
Highness's honour,' they were told, and knew her Excellency, his
Highness's mistress, was meant under this respectable appellation.
There was no denying it: Wirtemberg belonged to the Grävenitzin. Eberhard
Ludwig was a mere shadow at her side, but a loyal shadow which approved,
or affected to approve, her every action.
The doings at Ludwigsburg were always brilliant, often gay: masques,
banquets, music, play-acting, dancing; and even foreign travellers
repaired to the South German court to view the brilliancies which
equalled those of Versailles before the pious, wanton Maintenon had
turned the palace into a house of prayer-meeting, strangely enough almost
Calvinistic in its gloom.
At Ludwigsburg the months flew by in a whirl of gaiety and elegant
revelry. The groans of an oppressed peasantry, the curses of an overtaxed
burgherdom, could not pierce through the chorus of merriment. Smaller
stars waxed and waned, favourites of a day disappeared, but the
Landhofmeisterin's power grew greater, and her ambition became each day
more tremendous. She was treated with royal honours, and the court
customs were so arranged that her kin should take precedency of all.
The news of Count Würben's death caused fresh alarms at Stuttgart, for it
was expected that the Countess would again endeavour to remove Johanna
Elizabetha and marry the Duke. But she had learned her lesson, and now
contented herself with her towering position as ruler and mistress. To
such a personage the minor detail of legal marriage seemed unimportant,
though Madame de Maintenon's example rankled in the mind of every royal
favourite.
The Landhofmeisterin believed her position to be unassailable, and if a
thought crossed her mind that all this power and pleasure depended upon
the will of a man and a Prince, that will which is so often better
spelled caprice, still she could not doubt that this one man, one Prince,
was constant and stable. From the force of love, of trust, of habit, and
of fear he would remain hers till death. And after his Highness's death?
For that she was prepared also. 'Gold is power,' she had said to Monsieur
Gabriel long ago at Güstrow, and she did not forget this precept. She
spent freely and magnificently, but she amassed an enormous fund in
reserve. No year passed without some beautiful property becoming
hers--broad acres of field and forest, entire villages, old and lordly
castles. To name but a few of these: Gochsheim, Welzheim, Brenz, Stetten
(the Duchess-mother's dower-house), Freudenthal, the Castle of Urach, and
the Château Joyeux La Favorite. Her treasury was well filled, for she
levied taxes in the Duke's name, and they flowed into her privy purse:
gold heavy with the curses of a people. Her dream of an empire where she
should hold secret dominion over the wealth and enterprise of a vast
Jewish community had been realised in a modified fashion. She had caused
the stringent laws against the Jews to be relaxed; they were permitted to
worship openly; a synagogue was erected in Stuttgart, and Jews could
acquire civil rights. At her village of Freudenthal she had founded a
Jewish settlement. Old Frau Hazzim died there in peace, blessing the name
of the friend of Israel. The Jews, in return, served the Grävenitz well,
and she had great sums safely awaiting her out of Wirtemberg. All this in
preparation for the death of the man she loved! Yet, after all, the most
loving and perfect wives make these arrangements if they can: the
dower-house filled with linen and silver, and the jointure; but it will
ever be regarded as a heinous offence for the mistress to provide for
herself. These condemnations of ours are a part of the spontaneous human
judgment, and it would not be entirely human were it not gloriously
inconsistent.
Freudenthal was the place she loved best of all her possessions, and here
she gathered together the most beautiful objects: pictures, Italian
inlaid cabinets, graceful French furniture, wonderful silken hangings,
carved ivories, many rare books. The gardens were laid out by her own
design. Freudenthal lies sequestered from the world at the edge of a
little valley, and close behind the village rise long, low, wooded
hills--the Stromberg, dark with fir-trees, whose sombre tone is relieved
by groves of beeches. Below Freudenthal verdant fields sweep away in soft
undulations, broken here and there by beautiful orchards. The Grävenitz
knew that an elaborate garden would be a false note in this rustic
serenity, and her Freudenthal garden was designed in a simple style. She
had found there a peasant's orchard, with many ancient fruit-trees;
these she left untouched, merely sowing fine grass instead of the corn
which waves beneath the apple- and pear-trees in every Wirtemberg
orchard. The actual garden she planted with bowers of roses and beautiful
flowering borders along broad grass pathways. The only artificial
embellishments were two flights of stone steps leading to simple
fountains with large stone basins, where the water gurgled and splashed
lazily. 'Frisoni, build the house not in the new style, I pray you,' she
had said, 'some graceful Italian simplicity were better here'; and he
built a very pleasant mansion, unturreted, without tortured elegancies--a
long, low, broad-windowed country retreat, each proportion perfect, each
line harmonious. What a wealth of flowers bloomed in the Freudenthal
garden! How fragrant were the roses, the lilacs, the jasmine!
Here the Landhofmeisterin was wont to linger if his Highness were forced
to leave her for a few days. Here she would live a short span of peaceful
hours, ambition banished awhile, affairs of State forgotten. Here she
would sing again the songs she loved so well.
'Let us go to Freudenthal, et chantons les romances d'autrefois,' she
would say to Madame de Ruth and Zollern. Then his Highness would come
riding down the long, straight, narrow road from Ludwigsburg. He would
dismount at the orchard gate and call to her: 'Wilhelmine! Philomèle!'
and for an hour the glamour of youth and an echo of the early days of a
great passion would return to them. Sometimes he would pray her to sing
again the melody which she had sung in the Rothenwald when they had first
loved; but alas! her voice was not the same. The beautiful notes were
there, the consummate art, but the world-hardness had laid its touch upon
her very music. True, Wilhelmine singing was always a being much more
tender, more pure than Wilhelmine woman of the world, still her voice
registered the hardening of her soul. Zollern said that when she sang
'she expressed all she was not,' and it was a cruel truth. Sometimes
there rang for an instant an infinite yearning, but it vanished, and the
cold, perfect, artificially passionate utterance resumed sway.
Now and then Eberhard Ludwig still wandered in the forest. He would leave
the company of hunters, and followed by faithful old Mélac, the
wolf-hound, he escaped to revel in the silence and beauty of the
beechwood. Often he was terribly sad in those days. Wilhelmine perplexed
him; it was the hardness in her heart which made him suffer. He winced
when he heard even her glorious voice fraught with this new soul of
harshness. Often he endeavoured to tell her of his sadness, but she
laughed at him.
What more could he crave from her, indeed? She loved him, she was true to
him. Alas! he could not explain that it was the essence of her love which
had changed. She had no time to be sad, no time therefore to be tender.
Poor Eberhard Ludwig! poor brilliant, successful Wilhelmine! And yet, who
could blame her if she was greatly occupied? She was chief minister _de
facto_ of a country; she was finance minister of a queen, she was herself
queen; she was Master of the Ceremonies to a court; she was purveyor of
amusements to a great prince; yet she had lost the faculty to understand
that this prince agonised because she was too occupied to give him
tenderness. Passion she gave him, and brilliant gaiety; she tyrannised,
flattered, charmed, cajoled him, what more could he desire? Only, he
dreamed of the impossible; he dreamed of the love and friendship which
remain, of the roses and kisses which do not fade and lose their savour.
Of course, it was impossible; but from a dream's non-fulfilment a tragedy
was preparing. The tragedy of satiety and inevitable disappointment.
* * * * *
All Wirtemberg was in the Landhofmeisterin's grasp, but two things
disturbed her entire enjoyment of power: the continued residence of
Johanna Elizabetha in Stuttgart, and the unrelenting disapproval of the
Evangelical Church towards the unholy court of Ludwigsburg.
The Catholic Church, through Zollern, coquetted with the Landhofmeisterin
in the hope of winning Wirtemberg's allegiance by her influence. But the
Protestant community, headed by Prelate Osiander, was openly hostile. The
Landhofmeisterin, piqued by this, made overtures offering to endow
orphanages, schools, and to repair churches; but though the Church, after
the manner of Churches, swallowed the gold greedily, still it refused to
swallow the Landhofmeisterin so long as she remained in deadly and open
sin.
To oust the Duchess was impossible; therefore it was deemed sufficient
that she should be deserted and apparently forgotten, and surely in time
the Church would permit itself to be mollified, and if cajolery failed,
the Grävenitz dreamed of using the well-worn threat of Roman conversion.
Meanwhile she was ruler of the land, and she thought it preposterous that
in the State Church services her great name went unmentioned in the
prayers to God for the salvation of Wirtemberg's ruler. The Duke was
induced to intimate to Osiander his wish that the Landhofmeisterin should
be prayed for when they interceded for himself. Osiander treated this
request with contempt, and returned no answer. Then the matter rested for
two years, and it seemed as though both the Duke and his mistress had
forgotten it.
One day Osiander was summoned to Ludwigsburg. He could not refuse to obey
the ruler of his country, and though he suspected the summons to be in
truth from the Landhofmeisterin, it was signed and sealed by Eberhard
Ludwig. So the Prelate rode to Ludwigsburg.
It was as he had feared, and he was conducted to her Excellency's
reception room in the Corps de Logis. Bowing deeply, the page ushered the
Prelate into the large apartment and retired, and Osiander found himself
alone in the presence of the great Landhofmeisterin.
She came forward graciously and greeted the churchman with a profoundly
reverential courtesy. He returned her salutation coldly and turned away
his eyes, for her beauty was dazzling still, and he feared he might be
influenced.
'I think, your Excellency,' he said quietly, 'I think his Highness the
Duke wished to speak with me?'
'Monseigneur Osiander, I have ventured to request your presence
concerning a matter which has been long in my thoughts,' she said in her
most sonorous tones, and with that smile upon her lips which few could
resist; but Osiander observed her coldly and gravely.
'I pray you be seated,' she continued, and pointed to a large
red-cushioned chair, one which Zollern had brought from Rome, the typical
dignified, high-backed chair of the Roman Cardinal. To Osiander its very
shape was Papistical.
She flung herself down upon a gilt tabouret which stood near. It was much
lower than the Prelate's seat, and he could not fail to look down into
the deep décolletage of her bodice. He moved away a little, while a faint
flush rose to his cheeks.
'I am listening, Excellency,' he said; 'but you will pardon me if I urge
you to be brief, for I have much business to transact this afternoon.'
'Ah! Prelate, it is so difficult to be brief with those who do not
comprehend!' She leaned towards him. 'I have ever--respected you,
Monseigneur.'
The Prelate drew back from her. In his mind he repeated over and over
again, as though the phrase were an incantation against some evil spirit:
'The Jezebel flatters me, the Jezebel flatters me,' but man, he could not
remain insensible to the woman who thus appealed to him, though priest,
he abhorred her. All her charm was in her eyes, her smile; there was a
fragrance about her--an exhilaration.
'Madame, it were better if you respected God's laws,' he said sternly.
His severity seemed to him as a barrier which he raised between his human
weakness and her evil fascination. She sprang up; actress that she was,
she meant to convince this man by a grand and tragical scene. She knew
him to be too simple, too unsubtle, to detect the art which lent power
and pathos to her words. Besides, she was well in her rôle, it amused
her.
'Ah! you priest of God! I appeal to you, not concerning the necessarily
unjust laws of men, but concerning the law of God and Nature. See, it is
no law of God's that I have transgressed. Remember, I am truly the wife
of Serenissimus, blessed by prayer. My second marriage is nothing--merely
a political arrangement. And my sin, what is it? I found a good man
dragging out the days of his youth in sadness beside a woman who could
not understand him--a woman only his wife in name. I gave my life to him,
I am true to him. The law of man refuses me justice, but God does not,
cannot; and I appeal to you, as God's representative on earth, to give me
my spiritual right: to include me in your prayers.' She sank back upon
the tabouret. The Prelate was astounded. The question of the
Landhofmeisterin's being mentioned in the public prayers for the head of
the State came back to him, but it was incredible, preposterous. No; this
woman surely sought the grace of God. She was earnest, repentance had
come to her. She desired his prayers. Thus well had Wilhelmine gauged the
Prelate's character, his incapacity for detecting the play-actress in the
passionate, imploring woman.
The pastor of souls was softened immediately by the vision of rescuing
this strayed spirit.
'My daughter,' he said solemnly, 'if you indeed desire my prayers, I will
intercede daily for you. I shall pray that your heart shall be steadfast,
pray for God's pardon for your evil life. But I ask you to combat
temptation with all your strength. May Christ in His mercy help you.'
The emotion of his great earnestness rendered the good man's voice
tremulous.
'I thank you, you are generous to me.' She reached him her hand, and he
held it gently between both of his. 'But, Prelate,' she continued, 'is it
not written in the Bible that when two or three are gathered together God
will grant their requests? I would fain have prayer offered for me in
church.'
The Prelate started; yet the demand seemed too outrageous. He could not
credit that this sinner wished for a nation's prayers as though she were,
in truth, the Duke's legal wife. No, no; she was a repentant sinner
seeking the grace of God. Far be it from him, a sinner, to refuse his
help.
'You mean, your Excellency, that you wish me to pray silently for you
when the faithful are gathered together?' he said tentatively.
'No, I do not mean that,' she answered quickly; 'I wish a prayer to be
said aloud for my salvation.'
The Prelate was overwhelmed.
'Surely you do not wish to make public confession of repentance before
the congregation?' he questioned. The woman seemed mad to desire thus to
proclaim her shame, and yet he was filled with reverence for the faith
which could prompt so proud a being to humble herself in the eyes of all
men.
'Monseigneur le Prélat Osiander,' she said after a pause, 'I am the
Duke's wife before God, and it is my husband his Highness's command and
mine, that my name should be included in the official prayer for the head
of this Dukedom. I am ruler I would have you know.'
The preposterous demand was made, Osiander could no longer doubt. It was
no repentant sinner with whom he dealt, but the all-powerful mistress who
had but stooped for a moment to cajole him in the hope of gaining her
aim, and who, finding him uncompromising, had resumed her imperious
habit. The Prelate was aghast, indignant. He rose stiffly from his chair.
'Your Excellency cannot have considered this command, or even you,
Madame, would not have dared to make it. The only prayer that can be said
for you in church is that of intercession for the sinful.'
The Landhofmeisterin approached closely.
'Will you accede to my request? If not, you shall obey my order or it
will be the worse for you.' She was beside herself with anger. She hated
the word Sin; she always said it represented the bourgeois' criticism of
the life of gentlemen.
'No, Excellency, I will not obey you. With my consent the pure service of
the worship of God shall never be sullied with your name.' Osiander was
the sterner, the more relentless, because of his momentary weakness and
credulity.
'You are obliged to pray for me,' she retorted mockingly; 'each time you
petition Heaven for the health and happiness of the Duke, you pray for
me! For me, do you hear? I am his health and his happiness.'
To Osiander this was rank blasphemy, and, good man though he was, he lost
his temper.
'Indeed, Excellency, you say rightly. You are truly included in the
prayers of the congregation, for each time we say "Lord, deliver us from
evil," we pray for the end of your infamous reign.'
The Grävenitz laughed harshly. All traces of her softer mood, of her
fascination, had gone past; she had become once more the cold, proud
woman, the tyrant whose statue-like beauty seemed to the Wirtembergers to
be some devil's mask of false outward fairness, covering a mass of inner
corruption.
'Is this the only answer you have, Osiander?' she asked roughly.
'Yes, your Excellency, and if it were to be my last word on earth.'
The Grävenitz looked at him fixedly for a moment; after all, she rather
admired his intrepidity.
'Your audience is at an end,' she said haughtily, and bowed slightly as
though she were really some rightful sovereign dismissing a froward
courtier.
The Prelate returned her salute equally slightly, and turning away with a
sigh, he left her presence.
In later years the estimable man was wont to aver he had never been so
near to insulting a woman, yet he would add:
'But she was great in her very wickedness! Surely she must have been one
of the angels fallen from Heaven and apprenticed in Hell! for of a truth
she was in evil as compared with ordinary sinners, what in holiness is a
saint compared with ordinary good people. A wonderful woman, alas!'
Ah, Osiander, did she leave some clinging fragrance, some spark of her
subtle charm, to tingle for ever through your pure, simple soul?
* * * * *
In 1716 the Erbprinz Friedrich Ludwig had espoused Henriette Marie of
Brandenburg-Schwedt, a pretty and most correct Princess who possessed,
among other graceful talents, a perfect genius for tasteful dressing. The
marriage festivities had not taken place at Stuttgart, in order to avoid
the obvious complications of the meeting of the bridegroom's parents. The
Erbprinz hardly knew his father, for Eberhard Ludwig had permitted him to
remain chiefly with the Duchess in Stuttgart. At least the unfortunate
Johanna Elizabetha was granted the happiness of watching over her gentle,
sickly son. The boy had led a dull life enough in deserted Stuttgart, and
his natural aptitude for music and study had thus found free scope.
Immediately after his marriage, however, he was commanded to reside at
Ludwigsburg, where a fine suite of apartments was prepared for him and
his bride.
Friedrich Ludwig protested that he desired to remain in Stuttgart, but
the Landhofmeisterin willed it otherwise, and Serenissimus enforced her
will.
Henriette Marie played her part in this difficult position with dignity
and well-bred tact. She was perfectly correct in her demeanour towards
the Landhofmeisterin, yet she kept her at a distance and gently rebutted
the mistress's friendly advances, and refused to notice her subsequent
sneers. Twice during each week the Erbprincessin drove to Stuttgart to
visit her unhappy mother-in-law, and she was careful to inform
Serenissimus of every intended visit. 'Have I your Highness's permission
to journey to Stuttgart?' and 'I thank your Highness, I shall start this
afternoon.'
The Landhofmeisterin raged, but she was powerless against the
Erbprincessin's quiet dignity and amiable, obstinate coldness. Then, too,
Henriette Marie's wardrobe was a source of much annoyance to Wilhelmine;
she feared the younger woman had finer gowns than she. In fine, it was
the tragi-comedy of that painful jealousy of the woman approaching forty
years for the youth of twenty summers.
The Erbprinz, however, could not resist the Landhofmeisterin's charm. She
sang him to a very frenzy of delight; she assumed a tender, motherly
anxiety over his delicate health--an anxiety which she made charmingly
friendly; while she avoided the tiresome questions, the constant open
observation, the galling reminders of his weakness in the presence of
others, all that which poor, really tender, desperately anxious Johanna
Elizabetha had done, wearying her son, shaming him with his physical
delicacy.
The Erbprincessin bore a son in August 1718--a weakly child, the picture
of his feeble father. The little life's flame flickered and shuddered
through one bitter Wirtemberg winter, and in February 1719 passed away
into the best sleep the baby had ever known.
Here again the Landhofmeisterin triumphed over Johanna Elizabetha. She
knew how to console the Erbprinz with words of hope, how to turn his
thoughts away from the empty gilded cradle where had lain that frail
little being whom poor Friedrich Ludwig had loved with all his gentle
heart. Alas! Johanna Elizabetha was too sad herself to be able to cheer
sorrow, and she invariably met her stricken son with floods of tears,
doleful questionings, torrents of lamentations, and he went back to
Ludwigsburg--and the Landhofmeisterin--for consolation.
Thus things were fairly smooth at Ludwigsburg, and to Johanna Elizabetha
it seemed like some wonderful, illicit heaven where her husband revelled
and whence she was shut out. She sometimes dreamed of breaking into this
Elysium, of expelling the regnant devil and rescuing Eberhard Ludwig.
'Perhaps, if your Highness spoke with Serenissimus things might change,'
counselled Madame de Stafforth, and the Duchess prayed for strength to
conquer the fortress of vice, Ludwigsburg. For years she hesitated.
Indeed, she felt it would be almost immodest to enter the Sinner's
Palace, but the day came when she decided to risk herself in the
endeavour to turn his Highness's heart back to purity--purity and
herself. She dressed herself in her sombre best and ordered her coach.
Madame de Stafforth volunteered for service, but the Duchess said she
would go alone. She was very brave and terribly afraid.
Through the waving, yellow corn-fields, bordered by fruit-trees for the
most part, or else lying like a narrow white riband in the midst of the
broad rich valley, the road wound from Stuttgart to the Erlachhof forest
and the palace of Ludwigsburg. It was early August when the Duchess
journeyed thither, and the corn stood high and golden in the hazy warmth
of the sunshine. Far away to the right the hills rose blue and veiled,
and to the left the grim fortress of Hohenasperg dominated the smiling,
fruitful plain with frowning menace. Johanna Elizabetha's eyes sought the
distant mound where she knew lay the prison fort; perchance Serenissimus
would answer her pleadings by imprisonment in that dark fastness.
Her coach lumbered slowly on. The Duchess's horses were old and little
used to work, and the journey seemed endless. At length the avenue
leading to the residence gates was reached, and in the cool shade of the
chestnut-trees the Duchess's courage returned. After all, it was her
right to enter any Wirtemberg palace, she told herself; yet a chill
foreboding gripped her. Should she turn back?
The coach came to a jolting halt, and she heard her outrider explaining
to the sentry at the gate that she was the Duchess journeying to the
palace. The man seemed doubtful, but after several minutes' parley the
little cortège of two outriders, an old shabby coach, two troopers of a
Wirtemberg regiment for escort (no Silver Guard here!), and a
heart-broken woman, was allowed to proceed.
The palace of Ludwigsburg lay in the August afternoon haze. Her
Highness's eyes wandered over the vast pile: the long, low orangery to
the south; the numerous rounded roofs of the palace which seemed like the
amassment of a group of giant red-brown tortoises; the thousand large
windows glinting in the sunshine, the stately gardens. The Duchess sighed
deeply as her coach rolled down the broad street which led to the palace
gates. She saw the fine houses which bordered this street on one side
only, like so many courtiers turning their smiling faces towards the
gardens, the palace, and--the Landhofmeisterin.
All this, then, Eberhard Ludwig had raised to honour the whim of a
courtesan, of an unknown adventuress from Mecklemburg, while she, the
Duchess, legal wife, princess of a noble house--she was shut out,
banished to a grim haunted castle in a deserted town! She wrung her hands
together. She was helpless, hopeless.
Several courtiers, lingering in the street, stared curiously at the
shabby coach. One of the French dressmakers, hurrying from the palace,
stood stock still in surprise at seeing so inelegant an equipage in the
street of magnificent 'Louisbourg.' The Duchess, with the morbid
sensitiveness of a deeply wounded, slighted woman, winced under the
scornful inspection of the pert little dressmaker.
Now the coach entered the first gate of the palace, and once more the
outrider was obliged to proclaim and assure the identity of the
carriage's occupant. This time the sentry flatly refused to believe him,
and it was necessary to call the Captain of the Guard. Here the
Duchess's spirit asserted itself. She summoned the Captain to the door of
the coach and haughtily bid him admit her immediately. But the Captain, a
youth appointed by the Grävenitz, feared her Excellency's displeasure
more than God or man, and though he was gentleman enough to treat the
Duchess courteously, he begged her to wait while he repaired to the
Landhofmeisterin for instructions. No one was admitted to the palace
without permission from her Excellency, he said.
The Duchess inquired if Madame de Ruth was in the castle. At least, she
hoped that for the sake of old memories the grande Maîtresse du Palais,
'Dame de Déshonneur,' as she had once named her, would have sufficient
humanity to help her now. Madame de Ruth was in the castle, the Captain
replied, but she was very old and infirm, and he feared to disturb her
afternoon rest. Very old and infirm? The Duchess sighed. Ah! many years
had passed since she had seen the garrulous lady. Alas! she was no longer
young herself. God in heaven! why did that sinful, triumphant wanton
alone retain her beauty? She had been told that the Landhofmeisterin,
like some evil giant tree, seemed to grow more beautiful, more
resplendent each year. It was not true; for Time had set his cruel
fingermarks upon Wilhelmine, but her wonderful health and her complaisant
knowledge of success gave her a seeming youth. True, the pert little
French dressmaker could have told the Duchess of violent scenes over
gowns made to the measurements of former years, which could not fit her
Excellency; but the courtesan pays a homage to Venus, offering up the
tribute of powder, paint, and gorgeous clothes, and Venus responds by a
gift of seeming youth; while the virtuous woman is punished for her
virtue and her neglect of the Goddess of Appearance, by a shorter span of
beauty and youth. Yet there is an unerring justice in the world. When
Time has worked his inexorable will, and powder, paint, and crafty
clothing can no longer hide his ravages, then the virtuous woman
triumphs, probably for the first time in her life. They are both old, she
and the courtesan, but she is sometimes beautiful--old, grey, and sere,
but venerable, charming--and little children love her, and younger women
bring their troubles--ay, and their joys, reverently to her, feeling a
benediction in the touch of the pure, withered hand. While the
courtesan--alas! a ridiculous garish absurdity, a grim ghost of past
merriment, a horrid relic of forgotten debauches, a painted harridan at
whom the boys jeer when she passes down the street. Here is one of God's
great judgments and one of Nature's object-lessons.
But Johanna Elizabetha did not think of all this as she sat waiting at
the gates of Ludwigsburg Palace; her mind was centred upon the
probability of Madame de Ruth's kind heart prompting her to assist her
erstwhile mistress. The minutes dragged on. Old and infirm, he had said;
perhaps she came slowly down the stairs? Ah! at last! the Duchess heard
the well-remembered voice in the distance talking ceaselessly. Then she
saw Madame de Ruth, leaning on the arm of the Captain of the Guard,
coming slowly towards her.
A deep courtesy, and Madame de Ruth stood at the coach door. In a
tremulous voice the Duchess informed her that she would speak with
Serenissimus on urgent business, but that the guard refused her
admittance and she had therefore begged her to come to her assistance.
'Aha! your Highness craves the assistance of a Dame de Déshonneur? Nay,'
she added in a gentler tone, 'I fear I have not the power to admit your
Highness save to my own apartments.'
The Duchess bent forward. 'Madame de Ruth,' she said solemnly, 'you are
an old woman and so am I; we have not many years before God judges us at
His Eternal Tribunal. I pray you, by your hope of His mercy, to have
mercy on me, help me this once.'
Madame de Ruth looked at her; indeed, the Duchess's tragic face was
enough to soften even a harder heart than beat under the old courtesan's
padded, beribboned corsage.
'Well, your Highness, come with me! I will endeavour to summon
Serenissimus to my apartments,' she said. 'It will not be easy, and I
hope your Highness is prepared to offer me apartments in Stuttgart? I may
require them after this! My friend the Landhofmeisterin is averse to any
one being admitted to the palace without her permission.'
They passed through a maze of long, lofty, pink marble walled corridors,
and up several winding stone stairs, ere they reached Madame de Ruth's
apartments. Here the old courtesan left her Highness, while she withdrew
to make arrangements for the Duke to be summoned. In truth, she hastily
despatched a billet to the Landhofmeisterin informing her of the
extraordinary occurrence, and begging her for instructions. Even Madame
de Ruth was under the Grävenitz's iron rule and dared not offend her. The
curt answer came back written in her Excellency's energetic, elegant
writing: 'How is her Highness's appearance?' Madame de Ruth replied
equally curtly with the one word 'Hideous!' and a moment after the paper
was returned to her: 'Let him see her.--Wilhelmine von Würben und von
Grävenitz, Landhofmeisterin.'
It was a curious interview between Eberhard Ludwig and his deserted wife;
strained, unnatural, terrible, this meeting after long years, and
insensibly they fell into their old attitudes: he wearied, irritated,
coldly courteous; she tearful, imploring, tiresome. He told her that she
was nothing to him, and that she had no further claims upon him; he
provided residence, appanage, everything to which she had a right. She
responded that she claimed his love, his company, and in answer he bowed
deeply and left her presence.
Madame de Ruth returning to her rooms found a fainting woman prone upon
the floor, and to her credit be it written, she tended the Duchess
gently. When her Highness recovered from her swoon she requested Madame
de Ruth to lead her to the palace chapel.
'I would fain leave a prayer here! A foolish fancy, you will say, but the
sorrowful are often foolish,' she said bitterly.
Madame de Ruth guided the Duchess through another maze of long corridors,
and ushered her into the tapestried room which is behind the palace
gallery. Her Highness gazed with displeasure at the luxurious furnishing
of the Ducal pew, its gilded armchairs, red silk cushions, soft red silk
praying hassocks, and the gilt casement looking down into the church.
The church itself, designed by the Italian Papist, Frisoni, showed a
wealth of delicate pink brocade and of rich azure hangings, of golden
angels, of smiling goddesses whose voluptuous faces bore so unmistakable
a likeness to the Landhofmeisterin. With a sigh the Duchess fell on her
knees. 'God is everywhere,' she reminded herself, 'even in this frivolous
chapel.' She prayed earnestly for some time, and, rising, would have
turned to go, when her eye was caught by a finely sculptured medallion,
placed high up to the right of the much gilded and ornamented pulpit. Its
subject was Truth, and this severe personage stood represented by a
charming shepherdess with rose-wreathed mirror, and flower-bedecked,
coquettish hat, bare breast, and a skirt which, for no particular reason
unless it were the showing of the model's beautiful limbs, suddenly fell
on one side from the hip to the ankle of this remarkable figure of Truth.
Here again the face was unmistakable, and the sculptor had taken immense
pains to make this medallion a masterly portrait of the Landhofmeisterin.
With a gesture of despair and disgust the Duchess turned away and hurried
through the corridors. Placing her hand on Madame de Ruth's arm she
pressed her guide forward at so rapid a pace that the older woman almost
fell.
'Quick, Madame! quick, Madame! take me from this terrible place!' the
Duchess repeated. It seemed to her that Wilhelmine's face, her triumphant
beauty, pursued her at every yard of the Sinner's Palace. Even in the
church she knew that each figure, feigning to beautify the House of God,
was in reality merely another homage to the great mistress, another
subtle compliment of the architect Frisoni's for the Landhofmeisterin.
Madame de Ruth accompanied her Highness to her coach, and in broken words
the Duchess thanked her. 'If Fate turns against you here, Madame, you
will find a welcome at Stuttgart in memory of your kindness on this most
miserable day,' she said. But Madame de Ruth shook her head. She was of
the Ludwigsburg world, and when Frivolity forgot her she knew that she
would need no other refuge than six foot of earth beside her dead child.
Wearily the Duchess took her way homeward. There was no spark of hope
left in her heart now; she only raged that she had humbled herself, and
to no avail. The magnificence of Ludwigsburg smote her as an insult. She
shuddered at the remembrance of the endless reproductions of her enemy's
features: the whole palace was a marble homage to the Grävenitz, a
beautiful, enduring, kingly homage.
But the palace chapel! Ah! that was the worst of all, a very blasphemy.
And yet how wondrous beautiful it was, this palace.
She closed her eyes, but in the darkness she saw again the smiling face
of the woman who had ruined her life; she saw the graceful figure in the
chapel medallion, the voluptuous parted lips of the carven angel who held
the canopy over the pulpit, the delicately chiselled features of the
Aphrodites and the nymphs which she had been forced to pass in the
palace, and each one of which bore a resemblance to the Duke's mistress.
The sun was setting behind Hohenasperg, and a blood-red glow lingered in
the sky over the south-westerly hills of the Rothwald. The peasants were
going homeward after their day's work; already their sickles had cut
great gaping wounds in the waving, yellow beauty of the corn-fields. A
fresh north breeze sprang up and sent the white dust whirling in clouds
behind the Duchess's coach. And the north wind brought Johanna Elizabetha
another pang, for it wafted to her a sound of music from Ludwigsburg. The
musicians of the Silver Guards were playing a merry strain in the palace
gardens.
To the forsaken, humiliated woman this moment was symbolic of her whole
life: she journeying alone down the dusty road towards the gathering
gloom over Stuttgart; Eberhard Ludwig and the Landhofmeisterin at their
beautiful palace living in music and revelry.